Silent Hill : Return
by Zann23
Summary: Twenty-three years have passed. I never thought I'd see that town again. But things change - people change. That's why I've returned. I'm here again in this town...Silent Hill...
1. Prelude: Incubator No 14

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**Prelude ~ Incubator No. 14**

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"Sister Aurora? Sister Aurora?"

"Yes?"

"Where are we…?"

"That's not important now."

"Everything is blurry…"

"You've simply been taking a nap, dear. You've just woken up."

"Aurora, we must begin." A male voice drifted into earshot. "The drug is wearing off."

"Mmh."

The ten-year-old girl's almost-violet eyes deliriously flickered upward to the ceiling of the ceremonial chamber, where a giant Halo of the Sun simmered in an unseen heat. Her dark hair lay sprawled beneath her light frame laid out upon the blood-encrusted altar. Through the haze that obscured her semi-conscious thought, the girl managed to recognize the symbol. Ah, yes, the Halo! She recalled the circular symbol well – it was the crest of God, a manifest of Her supreme divinity …Or, at least that was what she had been taught. The Sisters at Wish House had told her all about it, how the outer rings represented chastity and resurrection, how the inner circles formed past, present, and future. Through the clouds that drifted across her psyche, the girl drew up a memory of one particular lesson at the orphanage – if it could have even been called a lesson in the first place. Three years ago, the orphanage had held a "Colors of Faith" day –

_Children in the classrooms hunched over religious coloring books, blackening Saint Alessa's hair and ensanguining God's scarlet robes with each crayon stroke. The little girl, at that time barely seven years old, found herself with a box of crayons and a large, blank Halo of the Sun staring back at her from the crisp white page. The girl's fingers reached into the box of crayons and emerged with a royal blue stick, her color of choice; she had not even touched the crayon to the page when she received a firm and resounding smack to the face. The crayon flew from her hand and clattered to the floor, where it was stamped upon by one severe Sister Aurora, barely a woman herself. _

"_No! No!" the twenty-year-old priestess spat vehemently, giving the girl another slap. "What do you think you're_ doing_? Do you_ want_ to curse God?!"_

"_N…No…Sister Aurora…I…I love God…" peeped the girl, tears gathering in her eyes as she_

glanced around the ceremonial chamber yet again, her consciousness now swirling back into its rightful clarity. Looming above her, silhouetted against the shimmering Halo, the girl saw Aurora and the other nine Officials of the Order. All wore strange masks, and though she knew nearly all of them by name, the girl could not recognize a single Official now. Only Sister Aurora's face was familiar – though, a similar mask rested atop her robed head.

"How do you feel?" said Aurora dimly, her apathetic tone of voice belying her sympathetic question.

"My tummy feels hot…" murmured the girl, who now found herself unable to move her body. Her limbs were numb, as if she'd slept on them for too long and had lost circulation, and the warmth in her stomach was beginning to intensity, almost as if something had begun to _writhe _within her . This sensation caused a vile chill to form in the pit of her gut - a kind of acidic fear and revulsion no child should ever have to experience.

"Good. We are ready, then," Aurora said coldly, pulling the mask down over her face, her lips pulled into a grim half-smile. This was the eleventh - and hopefully, Aurora had prayed, last - summoning attempt wrought by the Order, a cult dedicated to bringing about the return of their deity. Sister Aurora had revived the squandering cult and returned it to its former glory - well, almost. She was certainly no Dahlia Gillespie in terms of power or influence - but in terms of religious devotion, Aurora was on par with the rather infamous Sister Claudia Wolf. Many of Aurora's underlings would whisper about her psychotic tendencies, and most notoriously, her desperation to bring about the descent of God and the Paradise that would follow. This holy pursuit would eventually lead Aurora to the cult's own orphanage, Wish House, from which she would take girls and use them in freakish, bizarre rituals such as the one that was about to unfold. Disregarding logic in her desperation, Aurora would try to force God into these children, normal children, children who clearly would not be able to 'conceive' God as Saint Alessa had nearly half a century ago. Nevertheless --

"Begin the invocation," Aurora commanded a woman to her right. The woman nodded, and a string of foreign, sinister words escaped her lips, muffled somewhat by the demonlike mask she wore. As soon as the last of the ancient words left her lips, a great flash of light momentarily blinded the room. This was accompanied by a horrid, animalistic shriek from the girl on the altar – her stomach was afire with agony. Unable to move her body in response to the pain, the girl merely was able to wriggle her body uselessly upon the altar, shrieking all the while as some _thing _within devoured her.

"Do not scream! You're going to be the Mother of God!" urged Aurora to the writhing girl on the altar, an insane glint dancing in her eyes underneath her demonic mask. Perhaps this girl was the one...!

"Everyone, don't touch her!" warned an Official, a man.

"I don't believe it... Is it working?" quietly stammered the woman beside him in disbelief.

"SISTER AURORAAAA…!" screamed the girl, able to raise a quaking arm to reach out to the masked woman looming above her.

_She had known nothing about this ceremony – only that it would make God happy...according to the Sisters. Naively, she had agreed to it out of devotion to her faith, to please the temperamental Sister Aurora, and above all else, to please God like a good little girl should. Sister Aurora had told her this would make everyone happy...Sister Aurora had...told her..._this_ was happiness...? No...Sister Aurora had...lied..._

"The conception is nearing completion," eagerly noted another woman. Above, the Halo of the Sun gleamed and rippled violently.

"AAAAAUUUUUUGGHHHHH…!" yowled the girl, her eyes shut tightly against the darkness that now began to writhe within her stomach, almost as if her muscles were contracting, desperately attempting to push something _out, _to rid the body of some horrid parasite. A terrible shrieking began to build – whether it was in her mind or an actual sound, the girl did not know. The noise came to an awful climax, and the girl cried out once more…and then, everything dimmed to silence. The shrieking noise had ceased - as did the contractions that had wracked the girl's body.

"Huh?" gasped another Order woman, throwing her gloved hand to her mask in shock.

"God is..."

"She's vanished!"

"She's… She's gone…"

"What happened?!" demanded Aurora furiously of her religious kin, her voice muffled behind her mask. "_Where is_ _God?! W_hat has happened to Her?!

"The same thing that's happened eleven times before, Aurora. The girl couldn't contain Her," explained a man, leaning across the altar to make his point to the cult's leader. "And now we've lost Her. God's escaped us --"

"Whuh... N-No…" Aurora murmured, interrupting the man. Her voice then rose into a shriek, "NO! GOD! _GOD!_" She staggered backwards from the altar, clutching at her chest – then lunged forward a moment later at the half-unconscious girl.

"God's no longer here. Stop the ritual! The girl will die!" urged a male Official, tearing the mask off of his face and throwing himself at Aurora as another Official began injecting a clear substance into the girl's arm.

"Help me! Hold her back!" cried the man, pinning Aurora's arms behind her back as she writhed in his grasp, savage fury blazing in her eyes as she attempted to reach the girl. The mask flew from her face and clattered to the floor, loosened by her religious fury. Two other Officials abandoned the girl on the altar and hurried to restrain Aurora. A moment later, the giant Halo of the Sun blazing overhead began to slowly fade.

"_You…" _Aurora seethed, thrashing about in the Officials' arms as they began to drag her from the room. "Child of _sin! _I see it now. It has become clear. God has fled from us because of your filthy, impure soul! You shall _never_ see Paradise! She will ensure that you _rot in hell!_" She then broke down into hysterical sobs – the last the girl would hear of Sister Aurora before the raging woman was escorted from the chamber. Through her agony-and-drug-induced stupor, the girl managed to glimpse the fading Halo of the Sun looming above. The symbol flickered once, twice, three times, as a dying light bulb would, before dissipating into the air, and it was then that she lost consciousness.


	2. Chapter 1: Backroad

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Chapter 1 ~ Backroad

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_A letter to my future self… "Am I still happy?" I began…_

"Have I grown up pretty…" murmured the young woman along with the female singer on her car's radio. She glanced briefly in the rearview mirror, brushing a stray lock of blonde hair, her lovely blue eyes gleaming dully in the cloudy afternoon light. Seeing how tired she looked, the thin young woman frowned adorably, her pug nose scrunching along with her delicately pale lips. In the week or so she'd been in Maine, the damned weather had completely worn her out, and the weatherman had already forecasted _more_ fog, clouds, and rain for the next week or so in this area. Just her luck, visiting in such dreadful weather! She had already driven the car through God-knows-how-many mud puddles, and was not looking forward to the cleanup that awaited her back home… Well, her husband would take care of that back home if she coaxed him in the right way. Right now, though, the woman was far from home, far from her new life as a married woman, far from her beloved father.

Barely older than twenty-four, the woman was always teased for her tight relationship with her father. She would constantly miss and think about him, even as an independent woman. "Daddy _was_ still a good man," as the current song had inspired her to think on this long car ride. Growing up, she had no mother figure, and as such her father was her best friend, her confidante, her rock – and yet, despite how similar they were in appearance, the man she called "Daddy" was not her biological father.

"We were put here on this earth, put here to feel joy…" the song and young woman concluded, and she fell silent as the radio station DJ chimed on:

**Hello folks! You were just listening to "Letter From the Lost Days" on WKJY Lucky 104.3 as part of our "Blast From the Past" week – the best tunes of yesteryear! **

At this, the young woman smirked. The song wasn't _that _old…Perhaps less than a decade…?

**Next up is a real oldie but goodie, my old man's personal favorite, Ho—**_**SKRRREEEIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEIIIEEEIIEEEIIIIII…!**_

"Nnnngh, ouch!" the young lady cried as the radio erupted into horrid, shrieking static. She reached for the tuning dial and twisted it about, trying to locate a different station, but to no avail. Every station yielded the same eerie noise, and even more bizarre was the fact that she could not even turn off the radio. The young woman was so occupied with fiddling with the damned thing that she hadn't noticed her car had passed a small, bright green directional sign that stated in its familiar white lettering:

_SILENT HILL 3 MI. BRAHMS 11 MI._

"Stupid radio," she spat in frustration, wincing at the horrid sound as she attempted to re-focus on the road. The fog had begun to creep in even thicker than before, and on this winding, rocky highway, the risk of taking too sharp a curve and careening off a cliffside was extraordinarily high. It was best to forget about the radio and concentrate on the road, especially since she was under a time crunch. She was not even halfway to her destination, and wasn't too keen on driving on these strange roads after dark.

"Stupid Maine, stupid fog…" the young woman continued her tirade, flicking on her car's fog-beams. The grayness had become so thick that she could barely see thirty feet in front of the car, even with the beams on full blast, and the squealing radio did not help in making the situation seem any more pleasant. Tugging at her skirt to pull the fabric back over her knee for warmth, she sighed against the chill of the air-conditioner and prepared herself for the remainder of this long, tedious voyage—

_SHHHHHRRRAAAAAIIIIIIIAAAEEEEEEEUUUUUAAAAA…_

"Fuh— Hunnnnghhh…!" The young woman began a curse, but a groan escaped her lips instead. Her foot slammed on the car brake, an instinctual action, as her hands flew to her stomach, clutching at the fabric of her clothes in a stupid attempt to quell whatever abominable pain that had suddenly begun to wreak havoc upon her body. And that horrible shriek – it wasn't the radio, was it? It had felt like it had echoed in her very _brain… _The car squealed to a stop, and with a quaking hand the woman placed the vehicle in park, ejecting her seatbelt with her other trembling hand. She did not worry about other cars behind her – firstly, the road was empty, and secondly, her pain-swamped mind was not capable of such high-process thought at the moment.

"Nn… Augh…" She writhed in her seat, throwing her head back as the pain intensified in her gut. The radio squealed eternally. What could be _causing _such _pain?! _ It wasn't her monthly cramps, nor could it have been food poisoning – she'd barely eaten in the past few days. _Pregnant…? Cancer…?_ Her agonized mind foolishly pondered. _Did Mary ever feel this kind of pain…? _

No. This pain was...was not even pain anymore…it was a _heat…_a _fire…_

"Mmh… What…"

The fog-beams cut through the thick gray ahead, allowing the half-conscious woman a glimpse of a slender figure shifting in the swirling fog. No, wait. It wasn't just one figure – there were several, around five or six. They moved in a humanlike motion, which both comforted and unnerved the agonized woman. The strange visions drew closer and closer… Would they…help…?

"Help…" the woman peeped, vocalizing her last conscious thought before the pain consumed her. Her blue eyes dimmed and closed, her head falling limp against the seat, blonde hair sprawled wildly about her frame.

The figures in the fog approached the car apprehensively, while a braver one stalked toward the driver's side. After a moment's pause, the figure turned to its brethren and stated in relieved triumph:

"She is here."

Consciousness returned to her slowly – but what she awoke to was far from the reality she knew. She was lying on her back, surrounded by fuzzy, dark shapes that obscured most of her vision. Above the figures swirled something red and pulsating. Was this a dream? The pain in her stomach was still present, but still…this surreal awakening was—

"Breathe," ordered a stern male voice. A bowl filled to the brim with a fine white powder was suddenly shoved in her face. Surprised by the sudden action, she gasped loudly, inhaling a fair amount of the substance as she did so. Something rushed to her brain, and her eyesight blurred yet again as her senses and body numbed. Her eyelids drooped over dim cerulean irises and dilated pupils.

"Good. Very good. Let us begin." The female voice drifted into the young woman's mind – and again her consciousness abandoned her.


	3. Chapter 2: Twenty Three Years Ago

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**Chapter 2 ~ That Day, Twenty-Three Years Ago… **

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Laura arrived in my darkest possible hour, and has been my light ever since. Though, when we first met our relationship was, well, fairly rocky, to say the least. Actually, scratch that. I'm glorifying it. The girl outright loathed me. She would stamp on my hands, laugh at me, and on the rare occasion give me such a scare it was a wonder I didn't piss my pants on the spot. Once, she locked me in a room filled with mons—

Ahem. Ahem-hem. 'Scuse me, coughing spell. Sudden. Happens a lot nowadays… Mmh.

Laura came into my life twenty-three years ago. She was eight, I twenty-nine. At the time I had never known eight-year-olds were capable of such stubborn hatred… I had never known she'd… Ahem. Well, I was in the dark about a lot of things twenty-three years ago. But that's another story.

"I was friends with Mary."

Twenty-three years ago, Laura spoke those terrible, revealing words to me. It was the first serious, purposeful conversation we'd had; it was then that I learned about Laura and her relationship to my late wife…my Mary.

Orphaned by a severe flu pandemic, Laura had been a ward of the state of Maine, and had spent much of her childhood in hospitals. Apparently, she'd some kind of chronic respiratory condition.

It was in one of these hospitals where she met a terminally ill Mary, dying of that _damn _disease. This was the reason Laura despised me – she claimed I never loved my dying wife, a statement that both I and the girl soon found to be untrue. See, over their stay at the hospital, Mary and Laura had developed a bond – a kind of bond I could never have held with Mary.

To say I was envious of Laura because of this would have been a severe understatement.

I first met the eight-year-old in the town of… Ahem. In a town Mary and I used to frequent on our vacations. Laura had been searching for her there, unaware that she'd died just the day bef… Ahem-hem. Well, after we both discovered that Mary…wasn't in town…we left together and never returned.

In the weeks that followed, I felt no hard feelings toward Laura, despite how she'd tortured me. My wife, bless her soul, loved that girl as if she was her own daughter – and I vowed to do the same. And so it went that on a rainy day twenty-three years ago, Laura became my daughter. After I settled some…lingering matters from my past, we relocated to Vermont in a quaint town called Woodstock, and lived in quiet happiness. Laura's health improved, and she waltzed through school. Girl had a good head on her shoulders, always had. It surely came from her life as an orphan, no doubt about it.

Right after graduating from college, when she was twenty-two, Laura married her sweetheart, moving in with him in nearby Queechee. I missed her so much that first year, and though I was so happy to see her start her own family, a part of me wished she didn't have to leave… My beautiful daughter Laura…

"Be careful what you wish for, James honey," Mary had once taunted me. "'Cause you just might get it all!" Perhaps that old saying is true. See, it's been seven years…seven years since my beautiful daughter came home. Seven years since my selfish wish came true.

The police officer escorting her told me that he'd found her driving aimlessly along the backroads of Maine – a fact that didn't surprise me. I knew she had business to take care of in Maine – but she knew the state like the back of her hand. It wasn't like Laura to get lost in Maine, her home state… The officer also mentioned her state of mind when she'd been found. She'd seemed dazed and mentally out-of-it – almost as if, as the cop had put it, she'd been "doped up". A breathalyzer test had come up with negative results for any alcohol or mind-altering drugs, however, and I quickly confirmed that; Laura never had a history with substance abuse. Nevertheless, I was relieved to find Laura in one piece.

And yet, the woman who came home to me seven years ago _wasn't_ Laura. Physically, yes, absolutely! She was my daughter, no doubt about it! But she wasn't _Laura_. The personality of that woman could not have been that of Laura's. Her mind had…had vanished. There in the doorframe stood a tranquil, serene woman – a mild-mannered woman who would fear the judgments of others, who would follow orders without so much as a peep in retribution. Rambunctious, stubborn, vivacious Laura was gone.

That day, I'd called her husband, and he had rushed over to the house, obviously concerned for Laura's wellbeing. What happened next… Dear God, it was heartbreaking. She didn't even _recognize _her husband, the man she'd dated throughout college, the man she'd vowed to love until her dying day. She had no recollection of being married, or ever _meeting _the man I claimed was her spouse, and kept on pressing me: "Daddy, are you sure? Daddy, I swear to you, I've never seen this man in my life…"

The divorce was swift and painless. I'd settled most of it; Laura was so timid and uncertain about the whole ordeal, she had resigned herself to staying home, desperate to avoid that 'stranger' who had claimed to love her. She's lived with me ever since that day.

…So, yes. It's been seven years. Seven years since my Laura came home. And it was this morning, twenty-three years since we first met, that Laura spoke of a town…a town whose name I never imagined she would ever say again.

"Silent Hill… Daddy, I need to go to Silent Hill."


End file.
